News Supreme Court Judgments September 2018

Car parked in front of one’s home gate, when is it an offense

The Supreme Court, in Judgment No. 40482/2018, clarified that the crime of private violence under Article 610 of the Criminal Code can be committed whenever an individual suffers a limitation of his or her freedom of self-determination. Specifically, the court found the elements of the aforementioned crime to be integrated where a person parks his or her car in front of the offended person’s property gate in such a way as to block passage through that gateway and/or the opening or closing of it.

Multiple traffic violations, material accumulation of fines is not the only applicable rule

In cases where an individual engages in multiple violations punished by the Highway Code, the material accumulation of fines does not always apply, given the possibility of qualifying such violations as a single conduct that, therefore, should be punished on a one-time basis. This is what the Supreme Court made clear in Order No. 22028/2018.

The Court made it clear that the Judge must evaluate the time elapsed between one unlawful conduct and the other, deciding whether the same is such as to result in different independent actions.

Child support allowance for child enrolling in college, increase legitimate

By Ordinance no. 21726/2018, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal brought by a father seeking to have the amount of maintenance allowance, paid in favor of his daughter, a college student, lowered. The court of legitimacy recognized, the necessary increase of the same (equal to 50% of documented expenses), due to the higher financial outlay incurred by the mother, resulting from the university enrollment, for fees, books, travel and travel of her daughter.

Therefore, the Court finds that the emergence of new circumstances, such as “the increase in expenses constituted by university studies,” results in the legitimacy of the request to raise the amount of maintenance allowance.